According to my mom, I was a "good little boy" who didn't cry much and seemed to be happy most of the time. I was a small boy with strawberry blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across my face. My mom has told me that I was very sensitive to how others were feeling and that I was always very curious. I started talking and reading fairly young and often drove my parents and grandparents to the brink of insanity with my constant questions of hows and whys about the world and how things worked. I remember being allowed to play dress up in high heels and makeup, and spending hours in the kitchen alternating between creating new recipes (all of which my brave grandmother willingly tasted) and dissecting the hearts, gizzards, and other organs that came with the turkeys cooked for Thanksgiving dinners. I didn't care much for sports and preferred to spend my afternoons putting on puppet shows or switching between playing beauty shop and operating room in my grandmother's front bathroom where my clients and patients were one and the same (you always want to have gorgeous hair when having an appendectomy!).
I also remember being treated differently than other children at a very early age. Okay, maybe I was a little weird and precocious, but I noticed that there was something about me that made parents and teachers uncomfortable (even some of my own family members weren't too sure about me). Once I started school, it didn't take long for the other kids to start calling me names (Sissy Chrissy, Priss, Gaylord) and I think it was probably around third or fourth grade when I got asked THAT question that became my worst fear - "What are you, some kind of faggot?" I remember watching my young mother witness these things happening to me, unsure of what to do or say, and me telling her that everything was going to be okay.
When I was sixteen, my dad bought me my first car, a green Volkswagen Beetle. I loved this car. I had many good times in it (driving around with too many friends in it, listening to mix tapes, losing my virginity, staying out all night, going to parties). The thing about having a green bug in a place like Odessa, Texas, is that you cannot be invisible. My car was a frequent target of shoe polish vandalism - usually with some rather graphic anti-gay epithets. I never really knew why it took me so long to wash my car when "friendly" shoe polish was applied - "PAM was here." "Chris is a chicken lover." "Watch out for Toonces." Thinking back,at least the silly stuff kept it from getting vandalized every other day like it did on the morning of all-region orchestra auditions my senior year. I remember feeling my mother's pain and helplessness as she stood outside in her night gown at 7 am on a cold Saturday morning as I washed off the eggs and vaseline, erased the "FAG ON BOARD" and "GET AIDS AND DIE" written on the windows, and vacuumed several bags of flour, hole punches, and cheap cologne off the seats and floorboards.
I grew tough as I got older. I was able to laugh it off when beer bottles were hurled along with "faggots" and "homos" at me and my friends in New York City's East Village. Or create an enthralling story of survival about the time I was stupidly making out with a stranger under the highway outside of the End Up in San Francisco when a car full of guys with baseball bats pulled up and told us that it was time that we "faggots were taught a lesson." (We ran and nothing happened to us.) I've grown into a man who feels lucky and fortunate that all I have experienced is threats of violence, destruction of property, and vandalism. I feel lucky that I am still alive and that I was never hospitalized. I've been convinced by others that if I don't want to be called names or made fun of then I should "act normal." I also scare my family and friends because I no longer remain quiet when I hear someone call me or someone else a faggot or dyke or when I hear snickering when walking past a group of grown men (and sometimes women). I sometimes fear for my own safety, not just when I yell back that "I am a faggot" in response to these assholes, but more often when I hold my husband's hand or give him a loving peck on the cheek, even in San Francisco.
I have survived all of this. And recently I survived the awful anti-gay messages that were "pro-family" and "pro-children" during the Prop 8 campaign and could not help but wonder how these political ads made young people dealing with sexual and gender identity issues feel. I read the blogs and discussion forums where people unabashedly called me and my friends perverts, sinners, the most evil of beings, terrorists, pedophiles, people who should be killed, and so on. I read the websites where religious and community leaders claimed not to "hate" gay people but hated what we did. I read comparisons of my sexuality, my relationship, to alcoholics and drug addicts. I was told that I could live my "gay lifestyle" as long as I kept my mouth shut and kept to myself. Again, all I could think about was young people and others struggling with their own identities. I felt hurt. I felt angry. I felt like my life and the lives of so many of my wonderful friends did not matter.
I've been reading all of the things that are being written about Obama's choice of Rick Warren for the inauguration. I have read some powerful and moving blogs and essays. I've also read all of the nasty, hate-filled rhetoric and name calling on some of the discussion forums, including the transition website change.gov. I cannot explain how deep the hurt is from all of this. I want to cry, but I feel too numb. I feel rage bubbling from deep within, and it makes me very afraid. This is NOT about same-sex marriage. This is about ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I refuse to stand by and allow another human being, another six year-old kind of odd, girly boy be made to feel he is less than others. I will not be watching the inauguration or celebrating the transition of power. I still support Obama and have hope for the future but I cannot be part of something that I believe is harmful and sends a strong negative message to LGBTQ people about our place in society.
